Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Despite constant announcements, promises and plans from the Government about its intention to deal with the housing and homelessness crisis as a matter of top priority, every time the Minister examines that crisis or talks about it and every day that passes, the crisis gets worse. It is a crisis that the Government promised in its programme for Government would be resolved within 100 days yet a year on it continues to get worse, not better, on a daily basis.

Yesterday's news of the escalating crisis was the Daft.iereport showing that the biggest increase in rental inflation ever recorded by Daft.iesince its inception, 13.5%, occurred in the last quarter of 2016. Dublin rents are now rising at a rate of 15%. Rents in Dublin are up 65% from their lowest point and 14% from their highest point before the crash in 2008. Average rents in Dublin are now €1,643 per month. In Cork, they are €1,096 per month while in Galway, they are €975 per month. They are €875 per month in Limerick and €745 per month in Waterford. Even with the Minister's rent certainty measures, another 4% can be put on that. Another 4% on rents in Dublin will bring the average rent cost up to over €1,700. In every category of rental property and in every single area, the rent allowance or housing assistance payment limits are very considerably less than the average rental levels. We have now also record levels of people in the rental market, at 475,000, which is an increase of 150,000 over the past five years, yet there are fewer than 4,000 rental properties available for rent, and most of them are unaffordable to anybody on a low or middle income.

The Minister's plan is not working. Even if his plan is to deliver increased supply - the magical mantra of the market - and that he will have 20,000 extra residential units a year, if I understand his plan, there will still be a massive surplus of demand over supply, even if his plan works, for years to come. That means there will be no pressure on landlords to reduce rents. For years to come, even if the Minister's plan works, rents will not decrease, and they are already unaffordable and continue to rise. The Minister has got to change tack or the situation will get worse.

I want to know what the Minister intends to do about this problem. If the HAP limit in Dublin is €1,300 and average rents are €1,600, how is somebody supposed to afford that? What are they supposed to do when they have nowhere to live? It is just not doable. If we think about it, 60% or 70% of an average worker's income is required to pay rent if they can get a property, and they probably cannot even get a property. It is just not doable.

We are asking for a radical change in tack to pin rents back to affordable levels, which means retrospectively reducing rents to something like 2010 and 2011 levels, and then have the rent certainty operating from there as well as a dramatic increase in council housing provision.

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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In response to Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett and the Daft.iereport on rent increases, it is clear that there are acute rent pressures in the rental market; we all know that. Those pressures are driven by a number of factors - rising demand, lack of supply and the high costs indebted landlords face in servicing their loans. Those stresses are again confirmed in the latest data from the Daft.ierental report but as I have said publicly, that is not a surprise. We know this is happening and it is what we are trying to address. That is the reason we are putting plans in place.

The report shows that rent asking prices rose nationwide by an average of 13.5% in 2016. In Dublin, annual rental inflation is at an average of 15% and strong rent inflation is also seen in Dublin’s commuter counties. These increases are placing huge pressures on tenants, particularly those who are seeking new accommodation. We want to tackle that problem and as I said at an event this morning, and at a housing conference yesterday, we want to change the housing numbers for two reasons, namely, for social housing to give people that choice but also economically this will hold us back. We cannot provide accommodation for people, companies cannot grow, we cannot expand and we cannot continue to create new jobs.

We want to do this, and we fully intend to do it, but it is wrong to say that we promised to do it within 100 days. That is not what we said. We promised to put in place an action plan that would tackle this problem over a couple of years. It is not possible to magically come up with a solution overnight. Deputy Boyd Barrett gives the impression that if we click our fingers, the problem will be solved. It does not work that way. There was no plan in place that was backed with money. A plan has been put in place now. It was put together over the summer in fewer than 100 days, as per the commitment, and published in July. It will be rolled out bit by bit from August-September onwards.

It should be borne in mind that this report refers to the period prior to the Government's new strategy for the rental sector, which was published in December as part of the overall housing plan, and prior to the rent pressure zones announced at the same time.

There is no doubt the problems in the rental sector are part of a bigger issue. We are in the midst of a housing crisis and the problems caused by high rents reflect, and are reflected in, the other issues facing the housing market. There are not enough homes for first-time buyers, while there is an increased demand for social housing, with unacceptable levels of homelessness. The issue is the lack of supply. All of the actions outlined in Rebuilding Ireland are aimed at increasing the supply of housing. Likewise, in the rental strategy which was published in December we are trying to get the balance right between rent control in certain areas to ensure only minor increases and encouraging increased investment in the rental market. We have to do both. We are trying to win new investment in the rental sector to have more houses provided because we cannot fix this problem overnight and build all of the houses needed.

It is wrong to say nothing is happening in the housing plans. Last year approximately 15,000 new houses came onstream. The plan in 2017 is for approximately 18,000 to come onstream, but we now expect to see up to 19,000, as there is no doubt that we will beat the number of 18,000. We want to reach 25,000 a year. I made it very clear to the construction sector at meetings held today that if we could get to 28,000 or 29,000 new housing units a year for several years to help us to catch up with demand, that is what we would do. The aim at the end of the five-year plan is to have new 25,000 houses per year thereafter, but in the middle of the plan we will probably go a little higher because we will need to do so if we are to catch up. The Deputy is absolutely right in that regard.

Coupled with this, we have efforts and had new plans announced to try to bring vacant stock back into use as social housing. More than 5,000 voids have been brought back into use in the past two years, with 2,000 being provided last year alone because we had provided the money to do so. We are putting in place the repair and lease back initiative which involves cash upfront to private owners to bring their houses back into usage as social housing. There are other plans such as the buy and renew initiative for local authorities. We are supplying money in new areas to make this happen. The capital budget for housing in 2017 has been increased by 50%. We are reacting to this and a total of €5.5 billion of taxpayer's money is being committed to fixing the problem, but we cannot spend all of it in one day. The Deputy should not kid himself. It takes time to put a system back in place. The system of social housing provision was closed down well before Fine Gael entered government, as the Deputy knows. We agree with him and are trying to build it back up again.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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The problem is that it just gets worse. If there was any sign that things were improving, I would give some credence to what the Minister of State said. It is not that the debate started today or yesterday or even a year ago. When I stood at the top of the Chamber in 2012 and warned that there woujld be slum conditions similar to those in Sean O'Casey's time, I remember that I was scoffed at from the Fine Gael benches. There was laughter across the Chamber because it could not possibly happen, but it is. Last week there was a newspaper report on a property in Lehaunstown. Today there is a newspaper report that a three-bedroom property with 16 bunk beds is being advertised to young women and rented out at €400 per bunk bed. The journalist who went into the place said it was absolutely squalid. We are back to tenement conditions and none of the measures proposed by the Minister of State will address the problems immediately. For example, a simple thing that could be done is, as we proposed in a motion passed by Dublin City Council, that the local authority should have the power to take and use any property which has been sitting empty for longer than six months if the owner does not signal an intention to use it. However, the city manager stated he would not implement it. I propose that he be instructed to implement the measure. It is completely unacceptable. I also propose that rents in the rent pressure zones be pinned back to affordable levels - approximately 2010 levels - as an emergency measure to make them affordable in order that everybody looking for rental property would not automatically be in a crisis, as is the case because rents are too high and HAP and rent support levels are simply not sufficient. Will the Minister of State do these things?

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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We have made the decision that in the rent pressure zones there will be a limit on increases to a maximum of 4%, one third of the rates in the daft.iereport today. The report reflects the situation before we published the rental strategy. Our intervention in these areas will help. I understand the Deputy wants us to move further backwards, but that is not something we are in a position to do. We have a rental strategy agreed to by all of the Cabinet which we believe has the balance right between trying to have predictability in rents in some key pressure zones and adding pressure zones where the evidence is available and encouraging more investment in the sector. If we cut off investment, we will have a bigger problem.

I recall the Deputy speaking in 2012 and fully compliment him ae flagged this issue, but I state repeatedly that the resources were not available. I wish they had been available in 2012 and 2013 to be spent on social housing but they were not. It became a real issue in 2014 and 2015 when we could see rents increasing. In areas in Dublin they have doubled from €700 to €1,400 in the past two or three years. They were not at these levels in 2012 or 2013, but they were in 2014 and 2015. I am saying the Deputy was right, but we did not have the resources we needed available. Now we have money to tackle the problem and have a plan in place to spend it . I have no doubt that it will make an impact. We cannot fix the problem overnight in the way the Deputy wants us to do so. He has a magic pen with which he could go and do it, but it does not work that way for us. We must crank the system back up, intervene where we can and put in place resources to activate sites and have State-owned land put back into use. The Deputy is correct on initiatives to bring vacant properties back into use.

On the motion mentioned by the Deputy, we have the site levy to be introduced in 2019. We have received advice from the Attorney General that we cannot intervene before then. In the meantime we will use carrots to try to get people to bring properties back into use. If the county manager wants to attempt to do this, so be it. I am not sure whether he would legally be able to do so. I understand what is behind the motion, but we are trying to use the carrot approach. We are asking people who have accommodation not in use to talk to and work with us through the various arms of the State. We can lease long-term or give them money upfront to bring the accommodation back into use. If people own land, we will work with them to service it to have it brought back into use. We will try all of these measures. We will get a better response in adopting that approach for now.